Kimo Armitage, poet, best-selling children’s book author, playwright and videographer, is from Hale’iwa, O’ahu, where his maternal grandparents raised him. Kimo apprenticed with esteemed poet and novelist Albert Wendt. He is an assistant professor at Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
by Kimo Armitage and Kai Gaspar
for Albert Wendt, with aloha
our palms had no lines and
everything we grabbed,
slipped and fell into
the empty place without
stories or beginnings.
So we prayed into
the seed of a kukui and
asked for a spark.
The kukui spoke,
telling stories of the Pacific
and of long voyages that
made the waters
in between our peoples
a warm blood
conducting voice and memory.
We were silent.
The kukui fire warmed the air
with laughter and talked
of a spectrum of tongues
that made glorious sounds
even in their differences
because our knowing
respects the talk
of trees and birds, and
The kukui spoke of genealogy/fathers and
genealogy/grandmothers who built
sturdy houses with
good intentions and fair advice
to traverse boundaries,
an ocean of stars
– to never forget
that it would always be a seed.
We are now inseparable.
From our stomachs
the kukui showed us to channel roots
thick and fibrous through our hands and feet,
to garden the fertile, dark soil,
the original callings
of our birthplaces.
We weave our words and mana’o
on palm ribs
end to end
flattening the leaves
into pages of telling
and as we are children
in the kukui’s presence
there is much sharing
of the spark
and though there is measure:
I. Our. Duty.
We are reminded
that the night will not last, that
there is comfort in beginnings
rounding into ends
rounding into beginnings.
From the dark time until sunrise
we speak to one another
through the wetness of stone.
In our sleep, where there is
work to be done,
the soot in the blackened sky
settles into our skins
and draws our emerging patterns
our storied bodies blooming.
Because we are grateful
we will cry
as real men do,
while we face the South
from Keawa’ula.
We will lift our palms
toward the sun and
show how they have been
etched and written,
these pathways and memories,
deep from the teaching.
and stuck, in this parking lot
waiting to see you. The lights
of my car beam over the
parallel lines of stalls
painted in tight rows,
these white ropes are cords
taut, now slack, entwine
my stomach into knots, the
lining scrunched tightly &
acidic, the space & words
between us raspy like sand.
Perhaps we will return
as lovers at midnight
where angles & crabs
scurry into the folds this black,
a bridge across the divide
of taboo and home, the
comfort of nothingness
much easier to bear
than this fire. The heat
crackling within me. The
burn, a sweet deception.
for Ki’ilehua
The village men
heave the sea turtle on to
the makeshift plywood table and
sharpen their knives on a wet stone.
By the time they are done
the turtle’s bones and carapace
are cast aside in a pile.
I put my hands in,
feel the force
that it once was,
and understand its majesty,
this life that swam oceans.